Leica Geosystems AG, part of the Hexagon Group, has close to 200 years of pioneering solutions to measure the world. Leica Geosystems products and services are trusted by professionals worldwide to help them capture, analyze, and present spatial information. Leica Geosystems is best known for its broad array of products that capture accurately, model quickly, analyze easily, and visualize and present spatial information. Based in Heerbrugg, Switzerland, Leica Geosystems is a global company with tens of thousands of customers supported by more than 3,500 employees in more than 50 offices across 28 countries.

Challenge: Managing a growing number of new, small offices globally

In the last three years, Leica Geosystems opened a number of new, small offices, across the globe. The original IT strategy required two servers at each office running Lotus Notes Collaboration, SAP, Windows Fileserver and a number of web based tools for CRM. All offices were connected via a worldwide MPLS network using Cisco routers and switches.

As the cost of supporting this IT strategy became too prohibitive for the smaller offices, Ingo Peterlunger, IT global network engineer, began to investigate consolidating the IT infrastructure into its three data centres. However, he was concerned that this would adversely affect application performance.

“Our IT budget was coming under increasing pressure with the requirement to support two servers at each office, as well as Windows user licenses, back-up and virus scanning. We decided that a consolidation effort would be the best strategy, but feared our employees’ application performance would be sacrificed.”

Solution: Riverbed Steelhead appliances easy to deploy

Peterlunger began to investigate WAN Optimization solutions and identified a number of companies to evaluate, including Riverbed, Juniper, Packeteer and Expand Networks. From these initial investigations only the products from Riverbed and Expand Networks were tested, and it was the ease-of-use and deployment, combined with broad application support, that made Riverbed stand out.

“We found the Riverbed Steelhead appliances much easier to deploy,” comments Peterlunger. “As our goal was to install a product that would meet our acceleration needs while requiring minimal administration, we decided that the Riverbed solution was the right one for us.”

The overall performance of the Steelhead appliances, coupled with the ease of deployment, convinced Leica Geosystems that the Riverbed Steelhead appliance would enable the company to successfully consolidate their IT infrastructure into three central locations and provide employees with optimum application performance.

Leica Geosystems has deployed 21 Steelhead appliances to 20 offices, and the results have been impressive. “Before Riverbed, we had to install up to two servers at each branch location.” recalls Peterlunger, “Thanks to Riverbed, these local servers are no longer required.

This alone has saved us from purchasing and managing around 20 to 30 servers.” Installing the Riverbed Steelhead appliances is now a much simpler process. “The staging of the box is carried out at our IT headquarters, and usually takes around 15 minutes. We then send it out to the branch office, where it is installed by one of the employees on site. It really is that quick and easy.”

In addition, application performance has been accelerated to LAN-like speeds. “The first time we ran the Steelhead appliances, the time to download applications was reduced by 30%. Now, users can access applications from the branch offices as quickly as if they were working on a LAN,” notes Peterlunger.

There have been other benefits as well, as Peterlunger explains, “We had deployed a new web-based CRM system in Asia, but before Riverbed, employees complained of poor performance due to latency issues. Installing the Riverbed Steelhead appliance fixed this problem overnight. Our users in Asia can now work with the CRM system, and that was almost impossible before the Riverbed WAN Optimization solution.”

“Thanks to Riverbed, we have been able to consolidate our IT infrastructure to three central locations, which has removed the need to run remote office server backups, and we plan to roll out a further 10 more Steelhead appliances this year.”

Looking Ahead

Based on its success with the Steelhead appliances, Leica Geosystems now plans to look at the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP) in order to run print servers and DNS functionality on the Steelhead appliances. These capabilities will further the company’s IT consolidation efforts. To support employee growth and the geographically dispersed sales team Leica Geosystems hopes to take advantage of the Riverbed mobile client.

SUMMARY

In the last three years, Leica Geosystems AG opened a number of small offices globally. The initial strategy was to provide dedicated Notes and File servers at each office, but the infrastructure costs associated with this approach were too expensive. Leica Geosystems investigated a consolidation strategy, but was concerned that application performance would be adversely affected.

With Riverbed Steelhead appliances, Leica Geosystems has consolidated its IT infrastructure to three data centers and improved application performance for its globally dispersed users.

“The first time we ran the Steelhead appliances, time to download applications was reduced by 30%. Now users can access applications as if they were working on a LAN.”

“Our users in Asia can now work with the CRM system and that was almost impossible before the Riverbed WDS solution.”

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